


We'll Make It On The Run

by NoHolds



Series: We'll Make it On The Run [2]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Kinda, PTSD, Post-Game, Roadtrip, Sacrifice Arcadia Bay, Suicidal Thoughts, They're both really fucked up about time travel I guess, pricefield, sacrifice arcadia, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 12:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 13,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5049520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoHolds/pseuds/NoHolds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>And here Max is, Max who chose Chloe again and again and again, over anything else, everything else, and she's holding Chloe's hand, watching a tornado suck Arcadia Bay back into the sea. Chloe wants to look away. Can't. Feels like maybe she has to watch. Some kind of repentance</em>.<br/>-<br/><em>Later, in the car, Max is quiet, quiet, quiet, watching all of the rubble out the window, and the smell of rain still clings to them both, and Chloe-</em><br/><em>Chloe does not know this person. This ancient, world-shakingly powerful being that has taken up residence in her best friend's body, and Chloe stares out the window at the chaos she has caused, and she does not know what to say.</em><br/><em>So she grits her teeth, presses a foot down on the gas, and they leave Arcadia Bay in their rearview.</em></p>
<p>Slowburn Pricefield Roadtrip, happy ending guaranteed.<br/>(Postgame)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Oregon

**Author's Note:**

> THIS FIC WAS STARTED BEFORE I PLAYED EPISODE FIVE!  
> It is now canon-compliant, but you can read the original chapter one at We'll Make it on the Run (alt).

1\. Oregon

Chloe could never- still can't, probably won't _ever-_ understand what it is about her that has Max so enthralled.

When Max left Arcadia Bay, when she stopped writing back, Chloe thought that it was a long time coming. That Max had finally come to her senses and dropped Chloe like maybe she should have ages ago.

And then she came back.

She came back, and they had the longest, busiest week of Chloe's life, and Chloe thought that maybe-

Felt like maybe they were little kids again. Exploring every corner of Arcadia Bay hand-in-hand, getting into trouble just like they used to. Except holding hands has a weight it never used to, and Max is so _tired_ by the end, and Chloe-

Chloe feels like she's _choking,_ because here's Max with doe eyes and pretty, artist's fingers, and she makes Chloe's stomach knot up in a way that's anything but unpleasant, but-

But Rachel Amber is buried in a shallow grave, and what they had wasn't just a misplaced crush, Chloe _loved_ her, and Max was never subtle, and when she looks at Chloe out of the corner of her eyes, when she reaches for Chloe's hand, it makes Chloe's throat burn, makes her reach for a bottle or a cigarette, for an easy out.

And now here she is, watching a storm devour the only home she ever had.

( _I wish I could drop a bomb on Arcadia Bay and turn it to fucking glass,_ she remembers, and _cringes_ )

And here Max is, Max who chose Chloe again and again and _again,_ over anything else, _everything_ else, and she's holding Chloe's hand, watching the tornado suck Arcadia Bay back into the sea.

Chloe wants to look away. Can't. Feels like maybe she has to watch. Some kind of repentance.

* * *

Later, in the car, Max is quiet, quiet, quiet, watching all of the rubble out the window, and the smell of rain still clings to them both, and Chloe-

Chloe does not know this person. This ancient, world-shakingly powerful being that has taken up residence in her best friend's body, and Chloe stares out the window at the chaos she has caused, and she does not know what to say.

So she grits her teeth, presses a foot down on the gas, and they leave Arcadia Bay in their rearview.


	2. Washington

Max closes her eyes at three am in Oregon, and opens them again at ten in the morning in Washington.

Chloe had driven through the night, and she's sitting back in the driver's seat, eyes soft on the road, humming something off-key under her breath.

They're surrounded all sides by trees, and the only sound is the air blowing past the truck's open windows, the crunch of tires on gravel.

Max trails her fingers out the window, rides the wind currents for a while, breathing deeply of that wild-pine air, clean and biting.

“You know,” Max says, after a long moment, “The driver's manual recommends two hands on the wheel at all times.” she's still staring out the window, watching the green blur of passing trees.

Chloe, broken wrist tucked in a sling against her chest, scowls. “Yeah, well, if you'd rewound instead of letting me break my arm trying to save your scrawny ass-”

(Max sees, rapid-fire, a rickety bridge, a rotten board giving under her weight, Chloe reaching for Max as she falls, Chloe grabbing hold, Max's weight tugging her down after, they are about to hit the ground when-

_rewind_

And there's Max grabbing the bridge, but Chloe overbalances, slips, and Max watches her body break on the ground so far below, so-

_rewind_

And Max grabs the railing and Chloe both, but Chloe's too heavy, so she drops Chloe, hears the _crack_ of her body on the pines beneath, and

_rewind_

Chloe Grabs Max, Max grabs the bridge, shoves Chloe back as hard as she can, hears something crack, hears Chloe curse, pulls herself back onto the bridge with a bloody nose, breathing hard.

Chloe's cradling a wrist bent at right-angles, but she's alive, and Max pulls her into an exhausted hug, and)

“Hello? Ground Control to Major Caulfield?”

Max snaps back into the present to see Chloe looking at her hard and serious out of the corner of her eyes.

Max coughs, once, gags on the memory. “Pull over.” She chokes, and jumps out of the car as soon as it's slowed enough, pukes her guts out on the shoulder of the road.

“Dude.” Says Chloe. “I thought you didn't get carsick.”

Max dry-heaves, the ghosts of pasts-that-weren't still branded behind her eyelids.

“Late night,” She says, even though that doesn't make any sense, and Chloe shrugs, passes Max a water bottle and a napkin.

“Whatever. Try not to get any puke in my car.”

Max nods, dry-mouthed, and they're back on the road within the hour, Max still staring out the window, Chloe still with an arm in her lap and her eyes on the road.

* * *

“You wanna stop in Seattle?” Chloe asks, carefully, somewhere around eleven, and Max glances up from her journal.

“Why?”

Chloe shrugs, won't meet Max's eyes. “I dunno. See your old friends?”

And it's funny, because when Max thinks _old friends_ she thinks Chloe, but Chloe is here, and her friends are getting drunk in Seattle without her, without the bruises of avoided apocalypse, and Max can't imagine trying to tell them what she's been through.

“Nah," Max says, "I think they'll do fine without me.”  and Chloe hums.

“Sweet. You wanna stop for lunch then?”

Max nods, can't help feeling like she's passed some sort of test.

They do stop for lunch. Spend the last of their change on fish-and-chips and talk about the weather.

"Where are we going, anyway?" Max asks after a while, and Chloe shrugs.

"I dunno. Always wanted to see the other states. Figure out where I wanted to move out to, when I had the money." She laughs, sea-salt bitter. "Guess I have no choice but to move out now. So- road trip?" It shouldn't sound nearly so defeatist, but there's a lot in their lives that shouldn't be the way it is, so.

Max stares down the highway towards Seattle, licks fry-grease off her fingers and thinks about home.

"Okay." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway I cried while writing this because I started thinking about Chris Hadfield's cover of Space Oddity. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo)
> 
> Gonna play episode 5 tomorrow so wish me luck I guess.
> 
> EDIT: I guess this is non-canon-compliant now bc Chloe doesn't break her arm in episode 5. Whoops.


	3. Idaho

They roll across the Idaho-Washington border sometime around dusk, Chloe yawning at the wheel.

Max is dozing off in the passenger seat, the kind of drowsy you only get after a long day of doing nothing.

She's a couple of breaths from sleep when the car veers suddenly, tires screeching protest, and Max jerks awake to find Chloe out cold in the driver's seat, their car headed straight off-road into a river. Their bumper's bending the guard rail and Chloe's awake and screaming, and Max reaches out on instinct, slams them backwards in time as far as she can.

-“and she's changed genres like three times in her career, so she's _clearly_ not that dedicated to her art _anyway-_ ”

It's 5:30, sun cool and low in the sky, Chloe midway through what Max knows will turn into a half-hour long rant on hypocrisy in the music industry.

(“I think she's kinda cute” Max had said, when _Shake it Off_ had blared tinny and soft through the car radio, when Chloe had switched stations with a scoff and an “I Hate Taylor Swift”. And suddenly they had been arguing, and here Max was again, headachey, dry-mouthed.)

“Chloe,” Max says, soft and pleading, leans her head against the cool window. Chloe breaks off.

“Jesus Max, if you're that wet for Taylor Swift we can switch back-”

“When was the last time you slept?” Max is suddenly so, _so_ tired, wants nothing more than to let this go, but she didn't save Chloe's life time and again to let her die on a backcountry road in Idaho.

Chloe shrugs, shoulders stiff and squared. “I dunno. Why do you care?”

“ _Chloe._ ”

Chloe sighs. “I dunno. Thursday night-ish?”

“Pull over.” Max's head is throbbing. The rewinds don't come as easy as they used to.

“Max, God, you're not my mom, I don't need a nap.”

“Chloe, listen. You're going to get us killed.”

Chloe laughs. “Alright, Grandma, Calm down, I'm not going to-”

She looks over to see Max pale-faces and shaky, eyes shut tight against the dimming sun.

“Oh. You screwed around with time again, right? So when you say I'm going to get us killed-”

Max nods. “I mean you _do_ get us killed. So please, pull over.”

Chloe lets out a heavy, _heavy_ sigh, pulls onto the shoulder.

“I hate this.” she says, cutting the ignition, and Max shrugs.

You'd rather we die?”

“Obviously not, I just-” Chloe snapped her mouth shut. Sighed. “I hate that you can _know_ this. It's not fair.”

Max wants to say, _it was fair when we were using it on David,_ but her head _aches,_ and Chloe feels like too far a stranger to bicker with, so she just says,

“Go to sleep.”

And Chloe _groans._ “We didn't even make it to Idaho.”

“I can drive us.” Max says, even though she wants nothing less.

“You know how to use a stick shift?”

Max shakes her head. Grateful.

“Then we're stuck in Washington for the night. Enjoy.”

* * *

Dinner is chips and half a bag of stale peach rings that Max is pretty sure have been in Chloe's glove box since 2010.

 Max is starting to regret not stopping to pack a bag before they left town.

* * *

It's roadside-in-the-country dark when Max works up the nerve to say, “Why don't you want to go to sleep?”

Chloe sighs, again. She's been doing that a lot lately. “It's not so much don't want to as can't.”

A pause.

“Why _can't_ you go to sleep?”

Chloe says nothing, for a long time, and Max almost thinks she's asleep when-

“Because you keep talking, dweeb. Go to sleep.”

Chloe's voice is a little too loud and a little too cheery, but Max shrugs, and closes her eyes.

 

* * *

They wake up stiff and tired, make it (back) into Idaho before noon.

“Whey you said my rewind powers weren't fair-”

Chloe shakes her head. “Max. Please. Not before I've had a coffee.”

Max nods, watches the brown-grass-straights of Idaho highway blur by.

 Later, then. But it's a conversation they need to have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So episode 5 was fucked up. Really good. But fucked up. I mean I kind of think we all knew the story was going where it was going from the start. It felt a little rushed, maybe, and the nightmare sequence went on way too long, but. This game was amazing. If you loved it but haven't bought it, please support the company and get the first ep. at least.
> 
> Now- question to you guys. Should I change the first chapter to make this fic canon-compliant, and make this post 'Sacrifice Arcadia Bay' ending? It wouldn't be too hard, but I'm torn. What do you all think? EDIT: I changed the first chapter. The original is still available on my account.
> 
> Next chapter: Max and Chloe talk like adults, and steal.


	4. Montana

On their third day on the road, they stop for a late lunch in Montana at one of the identical rundown rest stops that dot all of America's back roads.

This one's close enough to a river to be sea-side themed, a gift shop and a diner all in sun-faded, white-washed wood, peeling blue trim on the dirty windows. 

Chloe catches sight of the diner and freezes head-to-toes, and Max looks over to see her turning away, a muscle in her jaw jumping.

Max pretends not to hear the little choked-off noise Chloe makes, looks at the diner and thinks about breakfast at the Two Whales, when they were kids.

Thinks about sea-bleached siding and Joyce Price and that ancient jukebox, about all the things they've sacrificed and left behind.

The door to the car slams, suddenly, and Max jumps half out of her skin, rewinds a second on reflex before she realizes nothing's wrong.

The rewind is far enough back that Max sees the source of the noise, this time- Chloe shoving her door open foot-first, launching herself out of the car, and slamming the door shut the moment she's clear.

Max waits in the truck until her head stops spinning, steps out into the cold to find Chloe leaning up against the hood and smoking.

She's sucking down the cigarette in these fast, gulping breaths, embers burning hot and close to the knuckles of her off hand (her right wrist's still wrapped tight in a cast, tucked clumsy and plaster against her chest), her eyes wet.

“Can you grab us a table?” Chloe gestures towards the diner with her cigarette, and if her voice shakes, Max doesn't mention it.

“I'll ju-” Chloe clears her throat. “I'll be a minute.”

“Sure Chloe. Take your time.”

Chloe nods, jerkily, takes a long pull on the cigarette.

* * *

The diner- Fishtail's- is deserted when Max walks in. The sole waiter is watching an Italian soap opera on a grainy CRT screen behind the counter.

The bell on the door is loud enough to echo when Max enters, but the waiter barely glances up, just gestures to the empty tables and goes back to his show.

Max picks a booth at the back, all scratched linoleum and cracked vinyl seats. She picks at a piece of tape on the ancient tabletop until Chloe arrives, slamming the door open with a rattle of glass and a polite jungle of the entry bell.

The waiter just turns up the volume on the TV.

“So,” Says Chloe, sliding in across from Max, “How much money do you have left?”

Max looks up from the table, sees Chloe red-eyed, her voice choked and raspy.

“Chloe, are you okay?”

Chloe gives Max this unconvincing 'what are you talking about' smile.

“I wont be if I don't get something to eat. So how much money are we working with?”

Max roots through her pockets, comes up with a couple coins.

( _I can tell you everything you have in your pockets,_ Max thinks, and remembers that day at the diner. Simpler times, relatively speaking)

Together, they have one dollar and sixty-two cents.

“We can get the free water and leave a tip?” Max offers, and Chloe snorts despite herself.

Then- “Seriously though, can't you just-” Chloe gestures vaugley with her good hand. “You know...”

“What rewind?”

“Yeah! It's not like, _really_ stealing.”

There's a long pause. For a while, the only sound is the waiter's soap opera filtering through from the counter.

“Chloe, the last time I did a major rewind, it-”

Chloe grinds her jaw, looks away. “I remember.”

Max sighs, can almost smell the storm on the inhale. Someone on the soap opera starts sobbing dramatically.

“You rewound yesterday,” Chloe says after a while.

“To save your _life._ ” Max snaps, leaves out the 'again'.

Chloe shrugs. “You're fucking with time already, is my point, so where's the harm in-”

“Chloe I don't want another Arcadia Bay.” Max regrets the words as soon as she's said them, but she _won't_ rewind and take it back, she _won't._

(she ignores the way her fingers itch to reach out, slip back a couple seconds, it would be so _easy-)_

Chloe looks like she's been slapped, opens her mouth like she's going to say something but can't get the words out.

Max's fingers _itch._

From the front filters the sound of a couple arguing in broad Italian. A fly buzzes against the window.

Max swallows. Says nothing. Listens to the staticy soap opera and feels wretched, wretched, _wretched._

After what feels like an eternity (and Max can't tell if time is actually warping around them or if the situation's just that desperately uncomfortable), Chloe takes this deep, shuddering breath and says,

“I had family in Arcadia, Max. All my friends. My house, my  _mom_ _-_ ”

Max doesn't know what to say. Bounces the rewind hand on her leg. Her palm Itches.

“Whatever,” Chloe snaps, and stands quickly enough to rattle the cheap table on its legs. “I'll be outside.”

 _Oh Marco , io ti amo_ A woman crows on the television, and the door slams shut with a clatter of old wood and the chiming of the entry bell.

Max jumps back half a second, stops herself. Has to watch Chloe storm out again, thinks maybe she's crying.

 _No more rewinding,_ Max thinks _. Now you have to deal with your problems like everyone else._

* * *

Half an hour later, Max pads out to the car with a bag of takeout under one arm.

Chloe's leaning up against the hood of the truck bouncing her leg.

Her nose is red, her eyes puffy, and the way she's breathing is sort of wet, stuffy.

Max feels like the worst sort of monster. Doesn't quite know how to apologize, so she offers, “Peace?” and tosses Chloe a Coke.

Chloe catches it, pops the tab, takes a long swallow. She eyes Max long enough that Max starts to squirm, expecting the worse, but she only says,

“What'd you get?”

Max dumps the bag onto the hood of the truck. “Burgers, Onion Rings. Coke.” She waves at Chloe's drink. “Obviously.”

Chloe hums, grabs for an onion ring. “Pickles on my burger?”

“Of course.”

Chloe hums again, nods approvingly. “You pay for all this with your dollar sixty-two, saint Caulfield?”

Max shifts uncomfortably, opens her coke to fill space.

After a moment, Chloe laughs. “Fine. Peace offering accepted.”

Max laughs too, a little awkwardly, and they eat in a silence that feels something close to companionable for the first time in days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: added a little bit about Chloe's broken wrist bc it basically hasn't come up since chapter 2 and I think it should prbably come up.
> 
> Yikes, did I say they'd talk like adults in this chapter? Maybe next time.
> 
> S/O to google translate for this chapter, and apologies to anyone who actually speaks Italian.


	5. North Dakota

Sometime around midday in North Dakota, they roll to stop in a town-

_some_ town, doesn't really matter which, a tiny rundown place with dirty roads and endless, one-story buildings.

“We're stopping already?” Max blinks up from her journal to see the 'main street' of the town.

“Yeah, I thought a change of clothes was in order.” Chloe laughs. “We're starting to stink.” she scratches the back of her neck. “Uh, no offense.”

Max sniffs at her shirt- sweat, blood, the lingering smell of hurricane-

“Yeah, I think I could use a change.”

Chloe nods. “Good. Good! Been a while since the last Max-and-Chloe Shopathon.”

“Five years,” agrees Max, and she's pretty sure Chloe wasn't trying to guilt her, but-

Well, it wouldn't have been so long if Max had just _written back._

Chloe clears her throat. “Yeah, well, you've been saying you want a new style, right? Now's your chance.”

“Guess so,” Max says, wishing she'd had the foresight to pack a change of clothes.

* * *

“I'm not stealing from the Salvation Army.”

“We need clothes!” Chloe protests. “And keep your voice down.”

They're standing in the 'denims' aisle of the town's only thrift store, the front-desk clerk eyeing them suspiciously over racks of musty clothing.

“Okay, okay,” Max mutters, voice lowered. “But I'm still not helping you steal used clothes. People need these.”

“ _We_ need these.” Chloe sighs. “Fine. We can uh-” her brow wrinkles. “You can rewind to-”

She pauses, clearly thinking. “Shit, I dunno. You had to figure out all this rewind stuff on your own?”

Max shrugs. “I watched a lot of movies.”

“What, like Groundhog Day?”

Max ducks her head, looks sheepish.

“Hah! You used your rewind power to watch _Groundhog Day_?”

“I didn't know what it did yet-”

“ _Max!_ ” Chloe looks _delighted,_ laughter bubbling through in her voice.

Max just groans “I know.”

And Chloe _laughs,_ claps Max on the shoulder. “Alright, hippy. Let's get lunch. We'll figure out this clothing thing later.”

Max sighs in relief. “ _Thank_ you.”

The shuffle out of the store under the eagle-eyes of the clerk, laughing and shoving each other all the way.

* * *

"We can't pay for lunch either, can we?”

Max groans, thuds her head down on the table of the coffee shop they'd stopped at. “Shit.”

Chloe laughs. “Well, how'd you pay for lunch at that diner the other day?”

“I just-” Max gestures at the door.

“You pulled a dine and dash?” Chloe looks delighted. “And here you are acting all high and mighty on me! Oh man, Joyce would _kill_ you!”

“I left a tip!” Max protests, and at Chloe's raised eyebrow, she lets her head drop back onto the table. “I'm a bad person,” she mutters, and Chloe laughs again.

“Okay, Monster Max. Calm down. I'll- see if I can find us some work.”

“How?”

Chloe shrugs. “You still have data on your phone?”

“Uh- I guess.” Max slides her phone to Chloe. “Is this going to be illegal? Or- morally reprehensible?”

Chloe shrugs again. “Depends on your definition of morally reprehensible, I guess. I- Hey!” She's staring at Max's phone with wide eyes.

“Dude, the time on your phone is like, two years off.”

“What?” Max grabs her phone back. Squints at it for a moment. “Oh, yeah, nothing on me is affected by the rewind, so my clock must be-”

Max looks up to see Chloe staring at her.

“What?

“Max, you idiot, this solves all of our problems.”

Max blinks. “Because my phone is ahead?”

“ _Because,_ Max, you steal some money, rewind, keep the money, the money's back in the register-”

Max blinks, again. Smiles. “We have money _and_ we're not stealing. Chloe, you're a _genuis._ ”

Chloe grins. “I know! I was too smart for Blackwell, anyway.”

(and, if a knot forms in Max's throat when she thinks about Blackwell, about Arcadia, she swallows it down quick enough that no one notices)

“Not too smart for me, though.”

“No,” Chloe agrees, simply, and Max's chest goes tight for no reason at all.

* * *

They sleep in the Salvation Army's parking lot that night, a duffel bag of new clothing tucked under Max's seat.

(The clothes Max had picked out made Chloe groan “Ugh, _hipster,_ ” when she'd tried them on. “You look like you listen to Sufjan Stevens.” “I _like_ Sufjan Stevens,” Max had protested, and Chloe'd laughed. “Case in point.”)

Max's old clothes are unsalvageable anyway, now that she thinks about it, stinking of fear and sweat and ozone, and she leaves them in the dumpster outside the Salvation Army with a vindictive sort of glee.

“Way to go!” Chloe had laughed, lifting her splinted wrist for a clumsy high-five. “Sayonara, old Max!”

And she'd meant it as a joke, but the words roll around in Max's head for hours afterwards, heavy as thunder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What was Chloe going to do? Nothing legal, probably. Side note, it is surprisingly easy to find work on Craigslist if you don't mind breaking the law.
> 
> Sorry for the delay between this chapter and the last- halloween weekend was kind of busy for me.
> 
> As always, let me know what you thought. If there are any errors, let me know!


	6. Minnesota

Wearing used clothing is strange, Max thinks.

It's old. Worn-soft, the kind of comfortable you get from clothing that's been lived in for ages.

But- alien, too. Not broken in by _your_ body, not bought and worn and loved by _you._

 _This_ is how Max feels, cruising down Minnesota backroads in new-to-her clothing.

Itchy.

And it's funny, because the clothes she bought are all distressed to the point of fashionable, faded and old and soft, and it should be _so comfortable,_ after a week of the same pair of damp skinny jeans, but-

But it is not _Max's_ clothing, and it _itches._

She wishes, not for the first time, that she'd had time to pack a pair of sweatpants before fleeing Arcadia, because she could use a little comfort, now.

(Strange, perhaps, to mourn a lack of comfortable clothing when there was so much else to regret, but when Max thinks about Arcadia, about all of the rubble they left behind, her chest gets tights and her vision goes black around the edges, and she starts itching to rewind, even though there's nothing she can _do_ about it anymore, and then she can't think about _anything_ for _hours,_ for all the static in her head, so.

Easy, to mourn a pair of sweatpants. Not so overwhelming as a whole town sucked into the ocean. Better to wish for pajamas than think about all those alternate timelines collapsing in on themselves like so many houses of cards.

Max thinks about Arcadia and feels like a clumsy child knocking over sand castles, and the _weight_ of all that collapse fills her throat to choking, and-

and so she doesn't think about Arcadia Bay, if she can help it)

Chloe's drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, again, and Max's eyes catch on the friendship bracelet, worn and fraying, still tied around Chloe's wrist, its distress come by honestly.

Chloe glances over to see Mac looking, shoots her a warm smile, and Max _itches._

Max sits in clothes that are not hers, in a car seat worn thin by someone else, and she _itches._

She rolls the window down to catch a breath, catches her fingers on something rough on the door, looks over to see-

RA+CP 4EVER

Oh.

_Oh._

Max's palm _itches,_ and the words slip out before she can stop them, the way they so often did in that last week in Arcadia Bay.

“Did you like Rachel more than me?”

The car swerves a little, Chloe gone wide-eyed and stiff-spined, and when she opens her mouth to answer Max slips them back in time, cursing herself.

This time, when Chloe glances over to smile, Max is pale and jumpy, and Chloe frowns instead. “Are you alright?”

Max smiles, feeling brittle. “Yeah,” she says, and when Chloe runs her good hand back through her hair, the charm on her friendship bracelet catches the sunlight, and Max-

Max _itches._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway wow that nightmare sequence sure did reveal a lot of Max's insecurities huh?
> 
> (I know I said they'd have an adult conversation like 3 chapters ago it'll happen I promise)
> 
> Also, there's like, an expository line I decided to leave out of this chapter, but let me know if you don't get what's happening & I'll put it back in.


	7. Wisconsin

They stop for gas in Wisconsin, at this tiny Mom & Pop gas station that seems stuck in another time.

Chloe says as much, when they pull up to the pumps- “Woah, I feel like we've just done the time warp” And then she wishes she never learned to talk at all, because after all that they'd been through she should damn well know better than to joke about time travel.

Max looks a bit green around the eyes, but she just smiles and goes, “ _Totally_.”

And, faux-pas between them or no, Max thinks Chloe's right.

Places like this _are_ frozen in time, in a weird way, immune to the wear of the world, and Max thinks if time singularities (or whatever) existed, it'd be at a place like this.

A place like this ancient chrome-and-rust gas station, a place that wouldn't feel out of place fifty years ago, a place that survived somehow, unchanged, on a back road in Wisconsin.

Max only realizes she's been quiet for a few minutes when Chloe blows air out through her cheeks, scrapes a hand back through grown-out roots.

“Sorry, Max, I didn't mean to-”

Max shakes her head. “No! No, I was just zoned. I think you're right. It's like this place is stuck in time.”

Chloe laughs, but it catches a little at the edges. “Same old Max Caulfield.”

Max smiles, and then-

Neither of them know what to say. There's a beat of uncomfortable silence, and then Chloe clears her throat. “Well, I better gas up.” She slides out of the car a little faster then looks natural.

Max smiles tightly, waits in the passenger seat with one leg bouncing restlessly.

_Stuck in time,_ she thinks, watches her childhood best friend try to press wrinkled bills into a gas pump, blue-haired, tattooed, grieving.

_Same old Max Caulfield_ , max thinks, meets her eyes in the rearview mirror.

* * *

“There any more garbage in here?” Chloe asks, peering around the truck's cab.

“Besides me you mean?”

Chloe pulls a face. “Obvious joke, Caulfield.” She seems to think, a moment, then opts just to lean over Max to search for trash herself.

And- it's no big deal, really, because Max and Chloe were touchy, as kids, and even in that first week reunited there had been hand-holding and hugging and that one, drowsy-morning , kiss, but-

But Chloe is in Max's lap, practically, and so _warm_ in the autumn air, shoulders bare despite the chill, and Max's stomach goes tense and warm and nervous, so she leans back fast. Very pointedly does _not_ touch Chloe, definitely _does not_ watch the muscles of Chloe's shoulders shift under her skin with a dry mouth and a flush creeping up her neck.

When Chloe straightens up sort of fast, stiff, Max thinks for a moment she was just as uncomfortable (well, maybe uncomfortable is not _quite_ the right word, but-), but instead Chloe's got something clutched, white-knuckled, in her good hand.

It looks, to Max, like garbage. One of many, _many_ takeout bags they'd acquired over the past few days, greasy and old and stinking up the truck.

But Chloe says, “Max,” in a funny voice, and Max looks closer to see-

It _is_ just a takeout bag. From Fishtail's, that place with the soap opera they'd stopped at so many miles and states ago.

Chloe seems unsettled, though. “You had to rewind to steal that takeout, right?”

Max nods, carefully.

“Besides that, and the money in North Dakota, when was the last time you rewound?”

Max hesitates. Gnaws on her lip. “Two days ago.”

Chloe goes even tenser, a muscle in her jaw jumping. “Do I want to know why?”

Max thinks, _Did you like Rachel more than me?_

“No.” She says. “You don't.”

“Okay.” Chloe bounces one leg. “Can I ask you anyway?”

Max shakes her head. “I don't think so.”

“I guess you could just rewind if I didn't like your answer anyway, right?” Chloe's leg is bouncing faster, now. Max can feel it through the floor of the car. “I mean, you might have done it already.” she shakes her head. “It's bullshit.”

Max swallows, hard. “Chloe-”

“It's fine.” Chloe shakes her head, sharply. “Just- promise you won't use your rewind on me? No matter how mad I get at you, just- let me, okay?”

Max nods, slowly. “What-” she cuts herself off. “Alright.”

Chloe nods, too. “Okay,” She agrees, but she's still tense all over, white bone showing through the skin of her hands.

“Chloe, _what?”_

A muscle in Chloe's jaw jumps. She hesitates, a long, while, then takes a deep breath that seems to suck all of the air out of the truck.

Max tries for a steadying breath, too, but she gets a lungful of hot, tense silence, and chokes.

Finally, Chloe lets out an explosive sigh, rakes her fingers back through her hair. “I just- I don't like you having this kind of power over me, you know?” She snorts. “It's dumb. Whatever.”

“Chloe, I would never-” Max snaps her mouth shut. She'd manipulated Chloe with her rewind _two days_ ago. She won't be a liar _and_ a cheat.

“Here, look.” Max roots around her old camera bag (the last remnant of Arcadia Bay besides the two of them), pulls out an old watch. It's beat-up and childish, but still ticking at least.

“Here, if the time on this is off, you'll know I was using my rewind.”

Chloe watches Max set the watch to the dashboard's clock, sighs.

“Sorry, Max, this is bullshit. You've only ever used that power to help me-”

Max thinks about that kiss in Chloe's room. _You'd better not rewind this._ She had. Twice. Once to undo, once to redo. Thinks about a fight, after Frank's RV. Easy to say the right thing when you have infinite retries. Max doesn't say that, though. Instead-

“Hey.” Max pries the takeout bag out of Chloe's hand, pushes herself out of the car.

“I get it. Time Travel. I wouldn't trust me either.”

“No, I trust-”

Max is already walking away, tossing the garbage but she hears Chloe. Feels guilty all over.

But all she says is, “Good. Let's get back on the road.”

And so they drive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that took so long, folks! Ten days for a tiny chapter like this! I just couldn't get it right, and it's been a weird week for me, besides. Next chapter won't take as long, hopefully! 
> 
> As always, tell me what you thought, positive or not.


	8. Illinois

Max has the strongest urge to jump into the passenger seat of the truck and holler “DRIVE, DRIVE!” at the top of her lungs even though, of course, no one is after her.

She settles for dumping three hundred dollars worth of sweaty ones and tens into Chloe's lap through the open window of the truck.

Chloe jumps half out of her skin, jerks her head down to see a wad of crumpled bills spilling half onto her seat.

“ _Jesus,_ Max,” Chloe shakes her head. Grins, after a minute. “I feel like an old timey bank robber.” she drops her voice into a hokey, Godfather-esque drawl. “ _Got the goods, Caulfield?”_ Max grins back, slides into the passenger seat.

“Oh! And-” Max roots around her pockets, drops a pack of cigarettes onto the money on Chloe's lap.

“I only stole these because the shopkeeper was a jerk, and you were driving me crazy yesterday. Next time you run out, you're on your own.”

“Yeah, Yeah.” Chloe lights up, takes a long drag. Blows a perfect smoke ring out the window. “And Max- thanks.” Chloe glances over and smiles something small and genuine, smoke trailing from her lips. Max feels her ears go hot.

“Yeah, no problem.”

(The Cashier at the gas station had a shotgun, had pulled it on Max when she went for the register. Max can still hear the concussive _thunder_ of the cashier's warning shot, can still feel the adrenaline-sick buzz of slamming on the rewind in blind, instinctive reflex)

Chloe takes another lazy drag of her cigarette, drops back into that horrible Godfather impression. “You're on my good side fer now, Caulfield. Watch that you don't go makin' trouble an betrayin' that trust, or you'll be swimmin wit' the fishes before you know it.”

Max can't suppress a laugh. “I doubt there are many fish to swim with in Illinois.”

Chloe shakes her head, drops the accent. “Whatever, Caulfield. Could you help me get this money off my lap? I feel like a cheep stripper.”

“I dunno, Chloe. Three hundred dollars, and you didn't even have to get your top off.”

Chloe snorts, helps Max sweep the money into a paper bag.

When their hands brush accidentally, Chloe smiles, sly and lopsided. “I know, right? Imagine what I could get out of you if I showed a little skin.”

Max feels her whole face go red, Chloe's eyes hot and predatory in the sudden still. When Max chokes on her reply, Chloe just laughs this rowdy back of a laugh, and switches the car into drive.

Max watches the way Chloe's lipstick smears over the end of her cigarette, tries not to fixate on the pretty way her mouth moves when she blows smoke out the window.

* * *

Chloe has to alternate between smoking and driving, right wrist still bound tight against her chest. Max can't even muster up the energy to complain about the safety hazard, just resets the time on her watch by the dashboard clock and tries not to blush when Chloe (hand on her cigarette, not the wheel) shoots Max this wolfish, canine-flashing grin.

* * *

A few hours later, Chloe breaks the silence by waving a hand at the roadside farmer's market. “Whaddya think Caulfield?” She asks, in that awful accent. “Good place for a stick-up?”

Max shakes her head, smiles, drops into her best impression of a 40s femme-fatale. “You're a terrible influence, Ms. Price.”

Chloe grins back, flashing canines. “You love it.”

They _do_ pull over, but opt to just buy some lemonade, rather than stick up one of the fruit stands.

(“Besides,” Chloe cracks, “I don't know what I'd do with that many cantaloupes.”)

Max is sitting on a picnic table drenched in late October sunlight, watching Chloe saunter back with drinks in hand.

“Shaken,” Chloe says, handing Max a cup. “Not stirred.”

Max takes a long swallow. Shrugs. “Now you're mixing movies _and_ genres.”

Chloe just laughs, takes a drink. “Alright, buzzkill. No more suave crime solvers. How about... feminist lady roadtrip adventure?”

Max pulls a face, thinks of stick-ups and shotguns in convenience stores. “Ugh. Let's please not be Thelma and Louise.”

“Didn't say anything about _be,_ ” Chloe says, takes a long sip of lemonade. “No, I have no interest in entering some sort of sexy, fatalistic, lesbian death-pact.”

Max nearly chokes on a piece of ice. “I don't think Thelma and Louise were-”

Chloe rolls her eyes. “Okay bi, then. Jesus. Don't you read fanfiction? What kind of nerd _are_ you?”

“That's not-”

“Come _on!_ ” Chloe says, “You _know_ they had chemistry.” She doesn't seem mad, really, but she's talking like this is a well-worn argument, the sort of comfortable old disagreement they've had a dozen times already.

It's like a script that's missing half its lines. Chloe's looking at Max expectantly, smiling crookedly, and Max- Max isn't sure what Chloe wants her to say. She _flounders,_ and Chloe laughs, again, a little melancholy this time.

“There is,” she says, “Though, something to be said for young Brad Pitt.”

Max smiles stiffly, and Chloe lets out this sighing chuckle. “Sorry,” She says. “I must have watched that movie a dozen times with Rachel.”

Max _sighs._ “It's alright. Let's just- you know, agree- young Brad Pitt notwithstanding- that we have a moratorium on sexy, fatalistic, lesbian death pacts.”

Chloe laughs again, but the energy's gone out of it. “Deal. No Thelma-and-Lousing”

They lapse into silence, then, and Max sits back, watches the movement of Chloe's long throat as she drinks, feels the specter of Rachel Amber between them still.

Feels sick, a little, for looking at her grieving friend and getting hot under the collar, but Chloe is lean and raw-voiced and sharp-toothed, and whenever they touch Max can feel her ears go red.

It's like being thirteen again, with a first crush, the way Chloe's touch _burns_ , the way Max steals glances out of the corners of her eyes like she's afraid Chloe will catch her looking.

It's not- _uncomfortable_ , exactly, Max is just very _aware_ of Chloe's presence, in a way she never was before.

So Max watches Chloe lick lemonade from the corners of her mouth and feels desperately, _vibrantly_ young, and out of her depth, and wonders if Chloe feels this way, sometimes.

Wonders if she ever looks over at Max and feels the air go hot and still, wonders if Chloe's stomach ever knots up when they touch.

Chloe glances over to see Max staring, flashes Max a wolfish grin.

Max smiles back, weakly, and chalks it up to wishful thinking.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that took so long! I had a concussion and midterms in quick succession and now am still in the thick of both, but the line "Let's not be Thelma and Louise, okay?" popped into my head and so wrote this.
> 
> Next chapter probably in a few weeks, when Holiday break starts, maybe sooner if I keep being irresponsible.


	9. Indiana

Max groans, lets her head thud back against the carseat. “Chloe, it's too early for punk music.”

They're meandering along a back road in Indiana, gravel rattling loose under their tires. (“No highways today”? Max has asked, and Chloe'd shrugged. “What, you in a hurry to get somewhere?”)

Chloe laughs, good naturedly, turns the volume up a notch.”Too loud for you, Maxine?”

Max reaches over and eases the volume back down. “Ugh.” she agrees, voice still drowsy with sleep.

Chloe laughs again, leans over to shove at Max in the passenger seat.

Teenage Chloe is, Max had learned, actually a _morning person._ It's unsettling, Chloe so energetic before they'd even had coffee.

Unsettling and _irritating._

Max Caulfield, _professional_ not-morning-person, just groans in Chloe's direction.

Chloe sighs (but there's joke in it, and Max thinks it's okay, they're going to be okay-) and shuts off the music.

“It's not punk anyway,” she puts in, after a few seconds of gravel-crunching silence.

Max rolls her eyes. “Sounded like it.”

“No, no-” Chloe fiddles with the truck's CD display for a second, and a different (equally loud) song floods the car.

“See, _this_ is punk. Before we were listening to grunge, which-” She breaks off at Max's joking scowl. “No, listen, it's an important distinction, they were totally different movements-”

Max still scowling, says “Still too loud.” and Chloe laughs, _offensively_ awake.

“Okay, Caulfield. Coffee first. _Then_ you're getting your musication.”

“Musication?”

Chloe shrugs. “Not my best work,” she agrees, and Max laughs.

* * *

A few hours and six dollars worth of coffee later (Max and Chloe order “black, as big as you can make it” and “medium with whipped cream and some of that caramel shit,” respectively), Max turns back to the radio.

“Alright,” she says. “I'll bite. _What_ is the difference between punk and grunge.”

Chloe lights up. “Oh, yes, Max Caulfield's finally getting some taste.”

(and if Chloe looks Max in the eyes when she licks the last of the coffee-syrup from her fingers, Max doesn't acknowledge it except to blush and look away)

“Okay, first of all, listen to this-” Chloe rifles through one of the many piles of junk that call her truck home. “Uh, as soon as I find it. There any CDs in the glove box?”

“You still listen to CDs?” Max laughs, good naturedly. “Look who needs a musication now.”

Chloe rolls her eyes. “Okay, Vinyl queen. CDs?”

Max rifles through the glove box, still laughing, feeling lighter than she has in a long time.

* * *

“Okay, so this is... punk?”

Chloe pauses the music. “Sorry, that was sort of a trick question. That was _folk_ punk, actually, which-” She trails off, looks over at Max who is smiling broadly in the passenger seat looking entirely baffled and very fond.

When Max catches Chloe looking, her experssion settles into something with a little more bite, and she says; “So when do _I_ get to lecture _you_ on music?”

“When you get some _taste,_ Caulfield,” Chloe says, but she's laughing, and then Max is, too.

* * *

That night, they're lying on the hood of Chloe's truck, music drifting out of the tinny radio.

“Let me guess,” Max says. “Grunge?”

Chloe laughs, because it is so _clearly_ not, this music is soft and spacey and low, the kind of stuff she and Rachel used to listen to lying back on Chloe's bed, high as kites. To Chloe, those moments feel about a thousand miles and years away, right then, with her and Max here breathing quiet in the wide autumn night.

Max laughs too, softly, and they both lapse into silence.

Not because they don't have anything to say, either. But the music is so soft and the night so sacred, the sky so wide and dark overhead, that it doesn't seem the place for words.

Max creeps a pinky across the hood over the space of fifteen minutes, so it brushes up against Chloe's unbroken arm.

Chloe laughs, gently, flips her hand over to link fingers with Max.

They sit that way a long while, listening to muffled music and staring up at the bright, distant stars.

And, just for that night, the rest of the world is _so_ far away.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHO HAS TWO THUMBS AND IS ON HOLIDAY BREAK? THIS GIRL!
> 
> Also, I know Chloe's typically depicted as this lazybones need-a-forklift-to-drag-her-out-of-bed teenager, and that is fantastic, but consider also: obnoxious morning person Chloe who uses her alertness to irritate everyone else.
> 
> As always, let me know what you thought/if I made any mistakes.


	10. Michigan

“So, how old _are_ you?” Chloe's sitting back in an old diner booth, slouched so low she's looking up at Max. _leering_ up at Max, really, a tooth-flashing grin at her mouth and a gleam in her eye.

The air smells like burger grease and rust, and Max is pretty sure she saw a cockroach in the bathroom, but-

Well, it's neither the first nor the worst seedy diner they'd eaten in on this little road trip, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

“Sorry?” Max blinks at Chloe, startled, and Chloe shrugs. Takes a long sip of Coke.

“How old do you figure you are now? You know, with the time travel and shit.”

Max blinks, again. “Um.” She drums her fingers on the table, a while. “I mean, my phone says it's been, like, two and a bit years? So.”

“So you missed two birthdays!”

Max laughs, startled. “I guess? Why-”

Chloe's grinning, wolfishly, her eyes sparking with mischief, and Max-

Max _knows_ this look. Is intimately, nostalgically familiar with this look. It's Chloe's “I'm about to make a bad decision” face. The face she made before breaking her wrist on a halfpipe when they were thirteen (the face she made in her room before daring Max to kiss her).

“Chloe, whatever you're about to do-”

Still grinning evily, Chloe just shrugs like “who, me?” and waves a waitress over. Max is starting to have kind of a bad feeling about this.

“Excuse me,” Chloe says, voice sacchariney, “But my friend here's just turned ninteen. Do you have some kind of birthday special?”

 

The waitress- a soft-stomached, steeley-haired, department-store-perfume kind of a woman- breaks into this wide, eye-twinkling smile.

Max lets her head _thunk_ down onto the vinyl tabletop.

A minute later, what seems like the entire staff of the diner is standing around their table, singing “Happy Birthday” as loud and off-key as Max has ever heard it.

Chloe is raccously, tooth-flashingly singing along, seemingly immune to the glare Max is shooting her.

They even give Max a piece of ancient, stale birthday cake with a drippy candle, and by the time the candle's out and the staff have filtered back into the kitchen, everyone in the diner is staring.

Max's ears are seatbelt-in-summer hot, and she's sure she's _bright_ red.

Chloe, looking satisfied, reaches across the table and licks icing off the end of Max's candle.

“Make a wish,” she says, grinning, and Max groans.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Later, in the car, Chloe is scraping the last bit of chocolate icing off a plastic plate with her index finger, still looking impishly pleased with herself.

Max, who is still faintly pink, scowls. “You were just in it for the free cake.”

Chloe laughs. “Guilty,” but when Max lets out this little _huff,_ her smile goes a little softer. “Hey, at least you have another birthday to celebrate, right?”

“Chloe, don't you dare.”

Chloe just barks out a laugh sand says, “You love it. Birthday girl.”

And Max _groans_ and goes red again and all of a sudden kind of wants to say “No, I love _you_.”

But Chloe looks young and happy again, and Max feels so _old_ and so _tired,_ and she thinks that maybe even with all the rewinds in the world it will never be the right time.

So instead she rolls her eyes and bites her tongue and listens to Chloe's ribbing with a twist in her stomach that is anything but new.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway! Here's another chapter! 
> 
> Con/crit welcome, also, feel free to yell at me about the new Star Wars movie because I just saw it and that shit was TIGHT.


	11. Ohio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for YET ANOTHER late update. Holidays and midterms happened. Con/Crit welcome. Thanks as always for reading :)

“You're the worst person I've ever met.”

Chloe laughs brightly. “Oh, come on, Max. The _worst?_ ”

Max takes a bite of mediocre pancake (another day, another diner) and nods sagely. “Worse than The Matrix Revolutions.”

Chloe puts her good hand over her heart in mock outrage, but cracks up after a second. “If I was really that bad, would I do _this?_ ”

She thunks a box down on the table. Small. Square. Cloth-ribboned and wrapped messily in the newspaper comics from a few days ago.

“Chloe, I think I'm too young for marriage,” Max grins across the table, teeth stained red with strawberry.

Chloe just rolls her eyes, slides the box back off the table. “Well alright Caulfield, if you're gonna be all snide about it...”

“What?” Max snatches for the box and Chloe ducks back, grinning.

“No way, Birthday girl. You had your chance. You can open this tomorrow. Bonne Fette part three.”

“Your french accent is terrible.” Max's mouth falls into that pretty, tooth-showing pout that's been twisting up Chloe's stomach since they were kids. “I _could_ just rewind and take it. Your freakishly long arms have _nothing_ on time travel.”

And, she's joking, Chloe _knows_ she's joking (about the arms _and_ the time travel, but, mostly the time travel) but Chloe feels ice all the way down her spine. “Rewind this,” she says, instead of _please don't,_ _please don't even joke about that,_ and hollers “HEY, IT'S MY FRIEND'S 20TH BIRTHDAY!” so loud that the diner's cheap windows rattle in their frames.

In the grand tradition of diners everywhere, the staff all burst into enthusiastic song, and Chloe sits back, half her mouth drawn up into a grin, and watches all the blood rush into Max's cheeks.

The thing is, Chloe _knows_ she's being petty, and dumb, and generally acting like an annoying thirteen year old. She _knows_ she's being immature, and Max is uncountabley old and sad, and maybe making light of that isn't the brightest idea in the world, but-

Well, Chloe's never thought of herself as particularly _nice_ (at least, not for a long, long time), and she _likes_ the hard edges of herself, and-

Well, maybe she's _pushing_ Max, a little. To see how _far_ she can go before Max rewinds. Maybe she snatched the present back just to see if Max would let her.

Maybe that's petty too (it probably is, Chloe thinks).Whatever. Chloe thinks of the storm, and of Max's five years without a word, and of all the awkward silences that stretch between them like the wires in those tin-can-telephones they made when they were kids, and figures she's earned a little pettiness.

 _Plus,_ Chloe thinks, as the song ends and Max slouches down into her seat, beet-red, _Max is totally pretty when she blushes._

* * *

“Do you think anyone actually lives here?” Max asks, voice high and solemn (her voice is naturally serious, Chloe knows, the same way Chloe's face naturally looks like she wants to punch someone. Chloe thinks they're both well-suited to their resting habits), after the third consecutive mile of pretty country nothing

Chloe, flush with Autumn sunlight, hand loose on the wheel, laughs.

“I'm sure there _are_ people in Ohio, Max.” (not that the empty roads they'd been coasting along gave any indication of that).

Truthfully, Chloe doesn't mind the prettily monotone scenery. Doesn't mind the weird, tinny lo-fi music drifting out of Max's phone.

(They sort of have an unspoken moratorium on the radio, for fear of news stations giving reports on everything they're running away from)

But- this is nice. Bad music and boring countryside aside, Chloe feels light. Untethered. Maybe it's the sun, or the cigarette she bummed off a guy at the diner, or the fact that she and Max have been _talking_ again, easy, like nothing had-

No, Chloe tries not to think about Arcadia Bay. Not on a day like today, especially, a day when she can feel the _lack_ of tension in her shoulders for the first time in almost as long as she can remember.

“I'm _serious,_ ” Max says, un-seriously. “I seriously don't think there's anyone out here.”

“I think you left out a 'serious' in there somewhere _,_ ” Chloe says, and Max wrinkles her nose.

“Chloe, ser- uh, _honestly,_ ” she says, voice finally cracking into a laugh. “I think we're the only people in Ohio.”

(It is the sort of inane, jokey discussion neither of them will remember later, Chloe knows, and if there's memory of this moment at all it will be of the unseasonabley warm Autumn sun, the bright feeling deep in Chloe's chest, the soft sort of endlessness of this stretch of road, this stretch of time, when for once there is nothing for them to fight, or save, or run from, nothing to do but laugh and talk like normal teenagers)

(That's _sappy garbage,_ Chloe thinks, and basks in the moment a breath longer)

“Whatever Caulfield.” She says eventually. “Maybe you're just a sociopath.”

“That doesn't make any _sense!”_ Max's voice is _all_ laugh now, all light. Something feathery and warm uncurls in Chloe's chest.

“No, listen,” She says, already laughing, and takes her hand off the wheel to gesture at Max, “I read a study on it- seriously, stop laughing, I read a study, and it says people who drink black coffee are-”

“Put your hand back on the wheel,” Max complains, between laughs, and Chloe obliges.

“So, people who drink black coffee, and not sweet sweet candy water like myself-”

“Chloe, you're going to get diabetes-”

“Yeah, but listen, there's a link between black coffee and sociopathy-”

Max is laughing- not at a specific joke, Chloe doesn't think, just in general, and Chloe finds herself laughing, too, even though neither of them have said anything particularly funny, and Chloe's eyes are on the road but Max is young and bright and sunlight-drenched in Chloe's peripheral vision, she is indistinct, she is _human,_

and Chloe doesn't see the watch on Max's wrist, or the friendship bracelet on her own, or the cast on her off hand or the shadows in Max's eyes-

For once, all she sees is sun and road and her best friend cracking up with laughter in the corners of her eyes, and all she thinks is,

_I can't wait to give Max her present,_

and it is such a bland, unmemorable thought,

and for the first time since Arcadia Bay, Chloe is really, _really_ glad to be alive to have it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't last.


	12. Pennsylvania

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wherin my weird spacing gets even weirder, if possible. Also, please note the change in tags! They reflect themes brought up in this chapter, so be forewarned!

It's too cold, now, to eat outside, which Chloe thinks is a damn shame, because this restaurant smells like stale piss and fresh rot.

Max's nose has been wrinkled since they walked in, and as funny as she looks like that, Chloe figures maybe they ought to find somewhere else to eat.

Max can't rewind them out of food poisoning, after all, if the symptoms take too long to kick in.

(Chloe supposes Max can't rewind herself out of food poisoning at all, because she isn't affected by the rewinds?

Whatever. It doesn't make a lot of sense to Chloe, if she's honest, and all those quantum physics books she'd read to try and understand Max's power had just made her feel sort of hungover)

But.

Chloe doesn't need to be a quantum physicist to know she doesn't want to eat in this disgusting restaurant. So she drops her voice low and says “Hey babe, you wanna get outta here?”

“Chloe, don't be gross,” Max scolds, but when she lifts her hands they _stick_ to the tabletop, a moment, something clear and syrupy coming away on her palms.

Chloe raises a challenging eyebrow.

“Alright, let's go.” Max says, drops a dollar on the table as an apology for not ordering.

The cold outside of the restaurant hits Chloe like a punch in the lungs- it's the first really cold day of Autumn, winter biting hard at its heels, and Chloe thinks, absently, that they should arrange to be somewhere warm by the time the frost really sets in. About how they should maybe throw some snow chains in the trunk in case the roads ice over early.

It's-

It's weird, to Chloe, eerie, to be standing chap-lipped in the frigid autumn with Max, thinking casually of the future.

Eerie because Chloe stagnated so _long_ in Arcadia Bay. Eerie because after Max left, and again when Rachel went missing, Chloe sort of didn't think she'd _have_ a future.

Not like she was gonna kill herself, exactly (not that the thought didn't cross her mind), just for months, _years,_ Chloe somehow didn't figure she'd ever make it to see who she'd be in a few weeks, let alone a month, a _year,_ and this, the simple foreign privilege of planning for the future-

There are tears suddenly biting hot at the back of Chloe's throat, and she reaches for Max's hand blindly in the cold.

Max turns, grinning. “Chloe, if you wore gloves-” the smile warps into concern when she sees Chloe's face. “Chloe, are you _okay?_ ”

Chloe soft of knows she's squeezing Max's hand too tight, but she can't convince herself to let go. “I'm really glad you came back to Arcadia Bay,” is all she can manage, throat closing over.

“Oh, Chloe-” Max pulls Chloe into a hug and Chloe rests her head against Max's shoulder, taking deep, shuddery breaths and trying not to cry.

* * *

 

“Okay,” Chloe says, hours later, in the truck. “Now that that embarrassing display is behind us, what do you say we get some grub?”

“If I say yes, do I get to open my present?”

“You be patient, Max Caulfield.”

Max groans, but it's good-natured, and if Chloe can feel her weird breakdown in the air between them, then- whatever. She's happy to ignore the elephant in the room. _More_ than happy.

So they pull through a McDonald's drive through and eat in the truck, and Chloe can _feel_ Max looking expectantly at her every few seconds, so-

“Alright, Max, keep it in your pants.” Chloe wipes her greasy fingers off on her jeans, rifles through her bag. “Here.”

The gift is still shoddily wrapped, small and shabby, but Max snatches if out of Chloe's hands with blistering speed.

Chloe can't suppress a grin as Max tears the wrapping off- it'd been a bitch and a half to _get_ the gift without Max noticing what was going on, but it was gonna be _so_ worth it-

When Max's eyebrows screw confused at the contents of the box (keys, Chloe knows, nondescript and new-cut), Chloe says

“Figured I'd finally teach you how to drive this old junker, I mean-”

But Max's one hand is coming up to her mouth, the other still holding the key, and something about it is like-

like some sorta weird deja vu, something Chloe doesn't quite remember but feels like maybe she should, this twisted crack-mirror reflection of the present,-

And then Max drops the keys and _launches_ herself out of the car, pukes onto the asphalt of the McDonald's parking lot, going down to her hands and knees as her lunch comes back up.

“When I-” Max chokes out, between desperate breaths, “When William didn't-” She tries again, then “You-”

And Chloe follows her down, muttering soothing nonsense words, holding Max by the shoulders as she chokes and sobs and shakes and retches herself bloody on the pavement.

Chloe's not quite sure _what_ exactly set Max off, but she kinda feels like maybe this was always gonna happen. Like the dam was maybe always gonna break, like the tide of Arcadia Bay was always gonna come rushing back over them, cold and crushing, like being caught between rocks and high tide, she just-

just wishes it hadn't been so _soon._

Wishes she didn't have to watch Max, here, choking on the saltwater of everything she's seen,

Chloe remembers how _old_ Max is, all of a sudden, a shaky god here on her hands and knees in a fast-food parking lot.

And Chloe feels like, _knows,_ that whatever fun they'd been having's just been wiped away, same way the storm wiped out Arcadia. These last few weeks have just been lag. Hang time. And now-

Touchdown. Whatever dumb thing Chloe's done has snapped Max out of the numb she musta been living in, and now here's Chloe trying to hold her together as she chokes on blood and puke in a Pennsylvania parking lot. _Nice Job, Price._

And Chloe hasn't seen the kinda things Max had, doesn't have no numb to come back from, and isn't that just right,

because she's the asshole, and Max is the hero, and didn't this damn shitty world just love to punish people who deserved it least.

All the same, Chloe'd sort of forgotten, _almost,_ why they'd been driving all these weeks like something was chasing them.

It's cause something has been.

And Chloe looks at Max, red-eyed and bloody nosed on her hands and knees, and knows it's caught up with them, after all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh anyway this chapter kicked my ass all over the place, and I'm not even sure I'm happy with it now, but. Here it is. Mostly based off that one picture in early episode 4/late episode 3 of alt. timeline Chloe with the car keys? Who knows.
> 
> Con/crit welcome as always.
> 
> (also, wait, did I put this out at a reasonable time of day? Not fucking one in the morning? The shock! The horror!)


	13. New York

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for character with PTSD symptoms.

The truck rattles along in silence for two slow days.

Chloe and Max crawl from Pennsylvania to New York along back-roads and side-streets, Pulling over often to stop and breathe fresh air and chew on whatever junk food is left in the car.

Max doesn't say anything.

Feels like she _can't,_ the weight of all those deaths and rewinds and meaningless choices and ruined lives pressing down fresh and crushing.

That sudden, vibrant memory of the alternate timeline- of Chloe dying, of the lines around Williams eyes, how he smiled and joked and laughed like he didn't know he was supposed to be dead- it brought back all the things Max had seen and done and undone, and it was overwhelming, _drowning,_ so sometimes Max felt like she was dying, like she couldn't breathe, and sometimes she just felt _nothing._

Either way, she didn't have the energy to talk.

And-

and the human brain, Max thinks (as someone who nearly failed grade 10 biology) was never meant to deal with _this._

The unwinding of linear time. Whatever storm Max had pulled into the world, she feels it still tossing its debris through the ruined streets of her memory,

And Max has a little trouble telling, now, what's real or not, even sitting next to Chloe in the truck feels half-undone, has the hazy unclarity of an overexposed photograph, like Max is on the outside looking in.

An observer. A meddler. Not a teenage girl with an extraordinary run of sucker's luck.

* * *

“You know,” Max says, when they finally roll across the New York state border, “I always wanted to go on a roadtrip.”

“Jesus-” The break of silence startles Chloe nearly into nearly swerving them off the road. She checks reflexively but- no, the time on Max's watch is right. She hadn't gotten alternate-timeline Chloe and Max crushed into roadside pulp.

Max's whole body collapses inwards folding at the shoulders, hunching back down into her seat, and Chloe scrambles to fill the silence.

“No, fuck, sorry, you just, startled me, uh- shit.”She reaches to scratch under her cast, out of habit, puts her hand back on the wheel at Max's dirty look. “What sort of road trip?” Chloe says, eventually, awkwardly.

Max laughs. “I was going to head straight through from Arcadia to New York. The Max Caulfield Photography Getaway.” Max laughs, something bitter and twisted and not like her. Chloe's stomach drops a mile.“I was going to take pictures along the road, and get published in a big magazine for my honest portrayal of the Modern American Life.” Max laughs, again, self-deprecating. “Humble dreams, as you can see.”

“You still could,” Chloe offers, “You still could do all that stuff.” She says it sorta because Max is her friend/the superhero to her sidekick/her first crush/the last person in the world that Chloe knows (no pressure). But, mostly, because, Chloe may not have a great feel for art, but even _she_ can tell Max is good. Prodigy-good.

“No,” says Max, “The perfect roadtrip book has already been made.”

“Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?” Chloe tries. Max is quiet, again, and Chloe's so _petrified_ she'll _stay_ quiet that she fumbles for another answer, panic clawing up her throat. “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?” Nothing. “Don Quixote?”

“It was a photography series, actually,” Max says, eventually. “Exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to do.” (Chloe wishes Max stopped talking about her lifelong dreams in the past-tense).

“It was made by these two guys. They went roadtripping all across the US, taking pictures. All analog, which you know I love.” Max pauses. Her voice is totally flat. Chloe can picture Max talking about this series in a happier time, lighting up about film or instant cameras or darkrooms or whatever these guys used to develop their photos. Now, she sounded like she was giving a badly-prepared school presentation.

“They used a bunch of neat studio tricks to give the pictures this mysterious, supernatural air. No digital editing at all. It makes the prints seem really tangible, yet unreal at the same time.”

Chloe feels, bizarrely, like she's gotta say something _smart,_ here. Like she's gotta _impress._ She scratches under her cast, stalling. “The Fantastic,” She blurts out, as soon as she thinks of it, without meaning to. Max blinks over, brow furrowed. _Smooth, Price._ “It's, uh, the part of a story where you don't know if the weird stuff happening is like- magic, and shit, or if it's just, you know, normal weird shit.”

Max blinks, again.

“I dunno,” Chloe says. “You were talking about how the series was 'tactile' but with weird studio effects-” she shrugs, feeling more uncomfortable with every second of silence that ticks by. “It just sorta sounds like your mystery series plays in that space.” She shrugs, again.

“I forget how smart you are sometimes,” Max says. It's Chloe's turn to blink, startled.

“It's that, exactly.” May says. “The play of reality and unreality. The known and the unknown.” She looks over at Chloe, all dark wide eyes and pale skin. “The Fantastic.”

* * *

“The Great Unreal,” Max says, later, New York City having passed them by.

“What?” Says Chloe, like the smart person Max forgets she is.

“The photography series. That's what it was called.”

“The Great Unreal,” Chloe says. The words are heavy in her mouth.

“The Fantastic,” Max says, and Chloe shoots her the ghost of a smile. Max returns it with too many teeth, or too few.

They drive.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in not a road trip book, and I would say Don Quixote doesn't qualify bc it predates the idea of the Great American roadtrip, so don't get ur english thesis ideas from Chloe Price (Even Hitchhiker's is more of a wacky adventure story than a roadtrip? I digress).
> 
> ANYWAY, now that I'm done being really pretentious, more pretentious!  
> [The Great Unreal](http://tonk.ch/the-great-unreal/) is the best photography series I've seen in a long time. It is eerie and intimate and a little supernatural, and a ton of the photos capture the mood & 'aesthetic' (forgive me) I'm going for w/ We'll Make it On the Run perfectly. Seriously go look at it it's amazing. Also, it does toy with the idea of The Fantastic, which is one of the main touchstones of Life is Strange itself, and definitely something I'll be playing w/ in the chapters to come.
> 
> As always, sorry this update took so long, I actually have an excuse this time (the flu! Hooray!) And con/crit is welcome. Love you all! Have a good one!
> 
> EDIT: Also, we broke 200 kudos! Which! I guess doesn't seem like a huge deal to you big-leaguers, but it's a milestone for me! Thanks to everyone who's left kudos & comments! Thanks especially to my regular comment-ers You are all amazing!


	14. Vermont

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter sponsored by WRUV burlington, your better alternative.

“Max.”

“Max.”

“ _Max.”_

“Hmm?” Max glances up, blinks a couple times, eyes wide and glassy.

“I said, were you gonna-”

Max is sitting, vacantly, in front of a plate of cold breakfast.

There are flies crawling lazily across the peeling linoleum tabletop towards Max's plate. Max waves them away every few seconds, but they always crawl back again, buzzing that annoying, fly-drone buzz all the while.

Chloe's half asleep at the table, has watched Max almost eat the same homefry six times in the last forty-five minutes.

They've been sitting there so long the grease from Max's bacon is starting to congeal at the edges of her plate.

“Never mind,” says Chloe, eventually.

Max doesn't give any indication that she's heard. Just sits and stares at the oil beading up on top of her eggs. Chloe watches her watch her eggs. A fly trapped against the window buzzes louder then the rest, rattling the shitty old glass.

Max never does end up eating the homefry, just stands up half an hour later like she's got places to be. Chloe drops some money on the table and follows Max out of the diner, leaves her breakfast for the flies.

* * *

“I always liked this radio station,” Max says, turning music on out of nowhere.

This sort of thing has long stopped startling Chloe- they've been inching through Vermont for the past few days, and mostly Max is quiet, or a thousand miles away, but sometimes she'll talk out of no where, like Chloe and her were just in the middle of a conversation.

It's whatever. Not like Chloe has anywhere to be. She sorta doesn't want to move on to the next state 'till she's sure Max is present enough to know where they are, anyway.

She'd always thought they'd take this road trip _together_ (not that she'd thought about taking a road trip with Max, after she left, back when Chloe thought she still might be coming back to Arcadia Bay.)

(Anyway.)

Chloe's been carting around Zombie Max for a few days, in cold-and-getting-colder Vermont, kinda just hoping Max would just.

Get better.

A little, at least.

Fuck if Chloe knew how to manage this.

Even when Max was talking- like now- her voice is weird. Hoarse.

“I always liked this radio station.”

“What station?” Chloe asks, instead of making fun of Max for being spacey, like she always used to would have.

Max nudges the volume up on her phone. “Vermont's Better Alternative.” She says, over some weird, ambient electro shit. “It's the local university's station.”

“Cool,” says Chloe, even though it's the sorta weird lowfi hipster shit Max likes that Chloe's never really understood.

Max nods, tapping her fingers along to the erratic not-beat.

* * *

They get an actual motel room for the night.

It's probably got bedbugs, or whatever, but Chloe's sick of showering in YMCAs or scrubbing herself down with handsoap in gas station bathrooms.

Plus, she thinks, Max could use a real sleep, in a real bed.

She looks like shit.

Chloe's not much better, sure- her roots are growing out messy and greasy and weird, and the only showers she has are cold and short. Even now, post-shower, shivering from the shitty motel heat, Chloe feels sorta grimy. Like she'll never quite be clean again.

But Max-

She's just. Sitting. On the motel bed, washed in blues and yellows from the smalltown, streetlamp semi-dark trickling in through the thin curtains.

She's wrapped herself in one of Chloe's too-big sleep shirts, but she's still wearing the day's socks and underwear, like she'd been getting ready for bed and forgotten halfway through.

“Shower's all yours,” Chloe says, softly, “Water pressure's shit though.”

Max blinks up at Chloe. Shrugs.“I'll shower in the morning.”

“Uh-” Chloe looks at Max's greasy, tangled hair, the grime on her knees from where she'd fallen in the mud a few days ago. “Okay. Sure. Get some sleep.”

Max doesn't move.

 _Jesus,_ Chloe thinks. “Hey,” she says. Soft as she can manage. “Max. Get some rest.”

Max shrugs. “You don't have to talk to me like that.” There's a weird scowl set around her mouth, suddenly, like heat lightning on a clear summer day.

“What?” But- Chloe can hear it, now. The soft _pity_ in her voice. Like she'd use to talk to a nervous animal, or something.

People always talked to Chloe like that, after William.

Like she'd shatter if they said anything too loud.

It'd made Chloe _itch_ so bad she'd cut holes in all her jeans, dyed her hair, gotten a piercing- no one used that voice on someone who looked like Chloe does now.

But- Max. Pale, bloodshot-eyed Max-

“Fuck,” Chloe says. “Sorry.”

Max shrugs. Whatever anger has washed over her was gone just as quickly.

“Just-” Chloe doesn't know _how_ to talk, now, without that weird softness. She can't quite get it out of her mouth. “Can I touch you?”

Max shrugs, again, so Chloe steps forwards, gives her this half-assed, side hug (and, _fuck,_ Max is so skinny under that baggy T-shirt, all pointy shoulders and ribs-)

“Just tell me if I can help, or, punch someone. Or something.”

Max cracks a smile at that, nods.

So Chloe crawls into her own bed, flicks off their little sidetable lamp.

She watches Max till her eyes are too heavy to keep open-

Max sitting half-undressed on the end of her bed, moonlight pooling in the hollows of her throat, the light-pollution blue of smalltown America clinging to her skin, the places where her bones stand through more than they used to.

She doesn't move in the whole time Chloe watches her.

Just sits, hands fisted in the sheets, washed in blue and sick, florescent light yellow, like some tragic figure in an offbrand Renaissance painting.

Chloe doesn't know if Max gets any sleep that night, but her own sleep is restless, her dreams chased with rain and the blood-copper taste of ozone.

* * *

 

They get up early the next morning, and Max doesn't shower, and she doesn't touch her breakfast, and they drive.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes.  
> Con/Crit welcome, as always.


	15. New Hampshire

They move on, eventually, because Chloe is not- has never been- a patient person. Vermont's roads can hold her still only so long.

Max might laugh, at that, under different circumstances. At Chloe's impatience, at how things had changed so much, and yet-

They were ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, Chloe always itching to _do,_ to _see,_ to _be,_ Max always lagging behind, urging caution.

_What if your mom comes home early?_

_She won't, Max, come on! One sip won't hurt._

Or,

_Chloe, come, on, you'll fall, get down from there._

_Yeah, you're probably right._

Max shakes her head, to clear out all the specters of their younger selves. The past is all mixed up with the present, in Max's head, time gone non-linear, warped and circular all through her memories: twelve-year-old Chloe with blue hair and a bullet-case necklace, healthy current-day Chloe with a hole in her forehead, eyes glassy, sitting dead-weight at the steering wheel-

It is not _real._

Max _knows_ that, what's real is-

is Chloe has always been impatient, could never sit still, had been impatient with herself most of all.

She was growing up too slow, learning too slow, talking too slow, _moving_ too slow.

That restless impulse is why she snapped her arm on her skateboard in middleschool- falling _off_ her skateboard, rather (is why she has a broken arm now? Why does she have a broken arm now-)

The point- the _point,_ Max knows, is that Chloe was-is-will-be impulsive, impatient, and so they'd left Vermont, and it might've been funny once, but-

but Chloe'd lingered so long in the first place because Max was- _is,_ some weird kinda temporally broken, holding Chloe back even now, them both adults, them both apocalypse-survivors, and here Max is.

Once again the object of Chloe's impatience, stopping Chloe from moving as fast as she wants,

like nothing's changed at all.

Which, again, Max thinks (can't stop thinking, her mind is one helluva broken record of late), would be funny for the contrast, except.

Except on one hand Max feels like she's being coddled, a little, and that _rankles,_ and on the other hand she maybe needs ten times the help she's getting, and on another hand again Chloe still doesn't sleep through most nights.

Has too seen things that have her jumping at shadows,

and so Chloe's restless impatience hauls them limping and bleary-eyed over the state border,

and it is not funny at all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am unreliable? Double-update to make up for it. The next chapter is uploading right now.  
> Con/crit welcome as always. Sorry for the wait.


	16. Maine

Chloe plows straight through to Maine, barely stopping for gas or food.

It's not-

She's not _running away_ from anything (the one thing she's always wanted to run away from doesn't even exist anymore, so).

But Vermont was a weird long week of Max's wide-eyes quiet, and watching her like that made Chloe itch, all over. Felt like salt drying on her skin after a too long at seaside, invisible and irritating.

So. Maybe Chloe floors it clear through New Hampshire, windows down, the roar of the highway filling the car white-noise loud.

Maybe the wind-rushing, open-windows drone makes conversation impossible. Maybe Chloe's kinda doing it on purpose.

Maybe, even, they roll across the state border into Maine without stopping for the usual celebration.

Maybe. Whatever. They make it to Maine anyway.

Max is quiet and pale as ever in the passenger seat, and Chloe's ears are ringing with too-much too-loud highway noise, and it's,

it's whatever.

Who has more practice coping with shitty stuff than Chloe Price?

No one, that's fucking who.

* * *

Somewhere around noon, Chloe starts to get hungry; a lightheaded, shouldn't-be-driving sort of hungry.

She turns to Max, to see if maybe she has a lunch request (unlikely), only-

Max is sheet-pale, eyes blown wide-pupiled, her breath coming fast and jagged.

“Max, what-”

Chloe starts to feel- weirdly queasy. Like, motion sickness and déjà vu rolled into one.

Max's nose is bleeding, crimson sharp against the shock-white of her skin.

(of course her nose is bleeding, it had been bleeding when Chloe'd looked over the first time, it had always been bleeding.

Or?)

Chloe's stomach jerks with nasuea, again, that weird déjà vu-stomach ache, an she's pulling the truck over on a side road when Max jerks forward against her seatbelt with a horse yell, one arm reaching forward as if to grab, to _twist._

Blood trickles down over Max's lips, dripping spit-washed over her chin, and she cries out again, all wounded-animal, and moves to cradle her head in her hands.

“Max?” Chloe's unbuckling her seatbelt as soon as the car's parked, sprinting shaky-legged to the passenger door. “Max, what's about to happen, what did you rewind?”

Max undoes her seatbelt like a robot, automatic, then slumps dead-weight into Chloe's arms, her eyes flickering back-and-forth like waking REM.

“ _Max._ ” Chloe tastes copper, has to fight off the ozone-panic of Arcadia Bay that's crowding like rotted nostalgia in the bottom of her lungs.

This is just like the beach, Chloe thinks, a little hysterically, just like the long, horrible day of the storm, Max gone limp and bleeding in Chloe's arms, except-

Max seems _awake,_ this time, if unresponsive, and there's no storm, and Chloe's one good arm can only hold a whole other person for so long, without the desperate adrenaline of fleeing a hurricane.

Chloe lets them both down, gently, onto the road-shoulder grass.

Max _flinches,_ reaches out again, and more blood washes down over her chin, dripping thickly onto her shirt.

“Max, Max-” Chloe can't think to do anything, just rubs circles into Max's back, trying for comforting. “You're scaring the shit outta me here, Caulfield, come on.”

Max shakes and pants and doesn't respond and this- some sorta seizure, maybe, Chloe has no idea, and the whole thing makes her skin _crawl,_ makes her itch to hit something or have a drink or- or, _something,_ she's never felt so fucking _helpless_ since she'd stood on that cliff and watched the storm-

anyway.

After what feels like hours, _decades,_ Max looks up, eyes clearing, and says, “Chloe?”

Chloe, one arm around Max's shoulders, startles, turns to face Max more fully. “Jesus Max, are you okay?”

“Am _I_ okay?” Max says, incredulously, blood flaking rust-like from her lips. “Chloe, are _you_ okay? You-” she reaches a hand to brush across Chloe's forehead, wondering. “How did you get away?”

Chloe grabs Max's wrist, stomach sinking halfway to Sydney. “We've been just- driving.” She says. “For _hours,_ Max, just-” she glances down at Max's wrist, suddenly can't breathe. “Max, Jesus, your watch- what've you been rewinding for?”

Max's looks down at her trapped hand, eyes fear-dark. “You, Chloe. You were _shot._ ”

“ _When?”_ Chloe realizes she's shouting, or close to it, but it's that or cry, and Chloe Price is _not_ a crier.

“I-” Max's hands start shaking so hard the watch display goes unreadable with motion. “I couldn't have just-”

“Imagines it?” Chloe rubs a hand up over her face. “Christ, I mean.” She shakes her head. Sighs. “Were you asleep? Was it a nightmare?”

“I don't-” Max's breathing starts to pick up again, and Chloe pulls Max tighter into her side, rubs comforting at her shoulder.

“I don't think I was asleep,” Max says, finally, voice small. “Chloe, what does that mean?”

“We'll figure it out,” Chloe says, stomach knotted up with nosebleeds and storms and the kind of hysterical-helpless she'd never admit to feeling.

* * *

Max's hands are shaking so badly it takes her half an hour to reset her watch, even as Chloe drives snail's-pace to avoid jostling her.

* * *

Chloe's not sure what the gas station manager must think when Chloe asks for the bathroom key, her left hand linked with Max's.

Whatever it is, he doesn't argue, just hands the keychain over with a wide-eyed look at Max's bloody nose-lips-chin-shirt.

The bauble on the key chain is a little cartoon fish, rubber, with a fishhook dangling out of it's mouth. “ _Hooked on Parsonsfield!”_ is printed on its side in comic sans. Chloe for some reason laughs when she sees it, bright and ridiculous in her filthy palm.

“You can get those in the giftshop,” the manager says, with a lack of tact that even Chloe is sort of appalled by.

“ _Read the room, dude,_ ” she wants to say. Instead just palms the dumb keychain and leads Max to the bathroom.

Chloe helps Max scrub the blood off her face, crouched cramped in a filthy border-town bathroom. Chloe figures Max maybe could do it herself- she seems lucid enough, now- but if she has another- _thing,_ episode, whatever- while Chloe waits modestly outside the bathroom, and hits her head on the sink, or something-

Well, they've lived through too much _shit_ for one of them to die like that.

Max is clearheaded enough, at least, to blush and turn away when she takes off her bloody shirt, which is probably a good sign.

* * *

The gas station manager gives Chloe another raised-eyebrow look when they leave the bathroom some twenty minutes later, Max wearing only Chloe's oversized flannel for a shirt, the buttons done up crooked, the too-big neckhole showing a wide expanse of freckled collarbone.

Chloe has the _strongest_ urge to tell the guy she's too classy to fuck girls in gas station bathrooms, come on, give her _some_ credit, but she figures maybe it's not the time. So she just give him her best scowl along with the bathroom key, and at least _that's_ still good for something. The guy looks away quick, like he's been burned, and murmurs some 'have a nice day' platitude.

Chloe doesn't answer, just shrugs and turns to leave and pockets one of those shitty fish keychains on the way out, without the manager noticing.

Whatever. Some cosmic, karmic force owes her big time. It can start with the fish.

* * *

They get to Portland eventually (Portland, Maine, obviously, because Oregon is too far and too fresh for Chloe to want to visit), because Chloe feels like she needs to be in a big city- or, as big a city as possible, in Maine- somewhere with people, _normal people_ , with normal lives, who still don't believe in time travel, or alternate realities, or fate, or whatever bullshit had ruined their lives.

They end up sitting on the edge of some shitty, rotting-out dock near the shitty restaurant they'd had dinner at.

Max has rolled up her jeans to dangle her feet in the water, like she doesn't even feel the cold.

“We have to-” Chloe sighs. “Max, we have to _do_ something.”

“Like _what,”_ Max snaps, then lets out a long breath. Takes another. “I-” she says. Looks out over the foggy water. “It's like being back home,” she says, voice small.

“We're on the other coast,” Chloe says, petulantly, though she knows what Max means. The fog and the surf and the old wooden piers jutting bone-like from the sand. The name of the damn city.

“Do you ever wish-” Max starts, cuts herself off, stares down at her toes, blue-cold in the water.

“Yeah,” Chloe says, not sure if she's allowed to close the shivering distance between her and Max, even for warmth in the cold-damp air.

Max ends up making the call for her, leans into Chloe's side. “Me too,” she says. “I'd wish for a redo, but.”

Chloe barks out a bitter laugh. It fogs a little in the cold, winding silver-edged around their heads. “Yeah,” she says, again. “Those don't usually work out for us.”

They sit in the shivering silence for a while longer.

“I know we have to try and do something,” Max says eventually. “About-” she touches her nose, absently. “But I don't-”

Chloe wait, lets out another deliberate, foggy breath.

I don't know if I _can_ -”

“Woah-” Chloe wraps her arm around Max's shoulder, gives what she hope is a reassuring squeeze. “We'll figure something out, alright?” She goes for a cheesy smile, thinks she manages maybe a smirk. “Dream team, remember? Partners in crime? We can't lose.”

Max laughs, shakes her head against Chloe's shoulder. “Sure,” she says. “I'm just-”

Chloe waits, skin stinging in the cold wind.

“I'm scared,” Max says, finally, sounding very small, and Chloe gives Max's shoulder another squeeze, leans to rest her head over Max's, so they're pressed close together.

_Me too,_ she thinks.

Max tucks up into Chloe's side, shivering, and Chloe can feel how _fragile_ she is, all pointy birdbones under Chloe's baggy shirt, her hair tickling Chloe's cheek.

A sudden, nervous rush of affection floods through Chloe, Max her shivering, lifelong friend, so fragile here in the autumn-cold and dusk-dark.

_I'm afraid too,_ Chloe thinks, and her and Max sit, and shiver, and _fear._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand part two of the double-update.
> 
> Con/crit welcome, etc.


End file.
